“Why cults?” is a great question. Like DeeMarie I recently watched the Netflix Waco series. First reaction: how can people fall for such crazy shit? Second: don’t they obviously cling to “fellowship” more than to life itself? Is that an index of what’s missing in our atomized society? Solidarity based on shared beliefs. So I’m curious and will give your book a read. Incidentally, during the pandemic I was inoculated against depression by reading dark books: Camus’ Plague for starters. Lots of others.
Yeah, I used to think about cults quite a bit, and did of course while writing my novel. It's something The Night Burns Bright grapples with very directly because my aim was to tell a story about how a cult becomes viable - how people get sucked in, how seductive it can be.
Congrats on your novel getting published and read! Your writing habits are enviable. I tend to take long vacations after I finish a piece of writing or switch to photography which probably accounts for my low output.
I did an editorial project on Cults for the educational publisher Gale Group in the early aughts and truly loved the research. Last summer I watched everything I could about Waco and David Koresh (I was studying at UT at the time and the siege was horrifyingly close and brought up frequently by one of my profs.). I now watch any documentary related to cults that I can find as well as podcasts.
I look forward to reading your book! And I totally get the image of hard drives full of writing that will never see the light of day. Pretty much sums it up!
Congrats on the book! It’s amazing to me that you can write fiction in your free time after doing such finely tuned journalism in your day job. Do the two feel distinct for you or blend together?
It's a good question! They're pretty distinct, but I have no issue doing both in the same day or same hour. I feel I'm picking at different parts of my brain. Both come naturally to me in different ways. I'd say nonfiction is more formulaic and easier for me in some ways because there are only so many ways to structure a piece or even to style it. You work within narrower parameters.
“Why cults?” is a great question. Like DeeMarie I recently watched the Netflix Waco series. First reaction: how can people fall for such crazy shit? Second: don’t they obviously cling to “fellowship” more than to life itself? Is that an index of what’s missing in our atomized society? Solidarity based on shared beliefs. So I’m curious and will give your book a read. Incidentally, during the pandemic I was inoculated against depression by reading dark books: Camus’ Plague for starters. Lots of others.
Yeah, I used to think about cults quite a bit, and did of course while writing my novel. It's something The Night Burns Bright grapples with very directly because my aim was to tell a story about how a cult becomes viable - how people get sucked in, how seductive it can be.
Congrats on your novel getting published and read! Your writing habits are enviable. I tend to take long vacations after I finish a piece of writing or switch to photography which probably accounts for my low output.
I did an editorial project on Cults for the educational publisher Gale Group in the early aughts and truly loved the research. Last summer I watched everything I could about Waco and David Koresh (I was studying at UT at the time and the siege was horrifyingly close and brought up frequently by one of my profs.). I now watch any documentary related to cults that I can find as well as podcasts.
I look forward to reading your book! And I totally get the image of hard drives full of writing that will never see the light of day. Pretty much sums it up!
Congrats on the book! It’s amazing to me that you can write fiction in your free time after doing such finely tuned journalism in your day job. Do the two feel distinct for you or blend together?
It's a good question! They're pretty distinct, but I have no issue doing both in the same day or same hour. I feel I'm picking at different parts of my brain. Both come naturally to me in different ways. I'd say nonfiction is more formulaic and easier for me in some ways because there are only so many ways to structure a piece or even to style it. You work within narrower parameters.